Plot Summary

In his warm snapshot of the Mississippi Delta, folklorist and filmmaker William Ferris sits down with music legend B.B. King and other denizens of the deep south to talk about the blues. Interviewing local musicians ranging from inmates at Parchman Prison to a virtuoso guitar-playing barber, Ferris finds the genre cannot be pinned down to a single definition or origin. The blues permeates the territory as an infectious feeling, heard in musical notes thrummed from impromptu instruments like broomsticks and axes, in addition to guitars.